Stack Stories
Inez Webster, a graduate of Lombard College, 1904 (a local college that was incorporated into Knox College in the wake of the Great Depression) was responsible for the direction of the Polygon orphanage in Leninaken/Alexandrova, Armenia during World War I. She became involved with the Knox County Free Kindergarten and the American Red Cross and did canteen work with the Y.M.C.A. in France during the 1st World War. She was ultimately posted in Armenia with the Near East Relief Organization at the Polygon orphanage, in the shadow of Mt. Ararat, where 6,000 waifs whose parents were massacred by the Turks, deported by the Russians, or imprisoned or starved to death in war were under her direction.
Later, she became the director of an orphanage in Russia where she experienced the earthquake of the 1931.In a letter to Max Goodsill, director of the Knox College Fifty Year Club she states, “the children are living and sleeping outside in below zero weather after the earthquake. There is only enough food to stay off starvation but not enough to satisfy their appetite.
Above is a telegram she sent to her friend, Robert Bender, Knox College class of 1911 and Vice President for the United Press Association
-Mary
For more information on Inez Webster and her work during WWI, take a look at the digital collection, “Knox College Experiences World War I.”